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In January 1953, JPL was in the market for its first digital computer.

After investigating the possibilities, a site visit was made to Consolidated Engineering Corporation (CEC) in Pasadena and the CEC Model 30-203 digital computer, shown in this photo, was eventually selected. The prototype at CEC was given the project number 36-101. JPL and the National Bureau of Standards were the first two customers to order the computer – the one ordered by JPL was 36-102, and the one for NBS was 36-103.

JPL's computer was finally delivered and operational in July 1954. It cost approximately $135,000 (more than $1 million in 2016 dollars). That did not include the operator's console, paper tape input and output, punch card unit, or other related equipment. It featured magnetic drum storage of about 4000 words (a "word" being a number or command) and a word length of 10 decimal digits. It contained more than 1,500 vacuum tubes.

For more information about the history of JPL, contact the JPL Archives for assistance. [Archival and other sources: Section 371 photo albums, Combined Bimonthly Summary No. 33, Datatron Chronology.)

Even as the holidays approach and we’re all supposed to be in a holiday spirit, supposed to be joyous. Sometimes we’re just not there.

But, as always, NASA gives me the opportunity to look at Earth from the highest perspective. From above, the world appears remote and untouched. There’s nothing but the timeless, immaculate and infinite beauty of our planet.

Sigh.

Together, you and I get to take this opportunity to share thankfulness for our Earth and everything pristine and beautiful about it.

I took this photo of a creek at Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.

Laura Faye Tenenbaum is a science communicator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, teaches oceanography at Glendale Community College and writes the "Earth Right Now" blog for NASA's Global Climate Change website.

Earth, from the vantage point of space: Serene, breathtaking, magnificent. No matter how crazy busy your day is, no matter the level of stress, or chaos, or distraction, take a moment today—right now, in fact—to step back and feast on the great wonder of our home planet, Earth.

Soufrière Hills volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat.

I like to think about being in nature when I get caught up in the overwhelming day-to-day news cycles. For me, getting out in nature always calms my nerves. It gets me centered and grounded; it reminds me that I have the strength to face life’s challenges.

The Bering Strait, which links the Arctic Ocean with the Bering Sea and separates the continents of Asia and North America at their closest point.

Right now I’m getting ready for a hike in nature. To notice things I normally pass by. To see vistas of faraway mountains and fields of small white flowers in the late fall sunshine.

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.

In those outdoor spaces, you get an experience of timelessness, a reminder of something bigger and longer-lasting than the rapidly shifting beats of the daily grind.

Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.

So stop and give yourself a break, large or small. Even if it’s just to gaze quietly for a moment at a few of my favorite Earth pix that I gathered here to share with you.

Laura Faye Tenenbaum is a science communicator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, teaches oceanography at Glendale Community College and writes the "Earth Right Now" blog for NASA's Global Climate Change website.

On October 31, 1968 JPL celebrated the 32nd anniversary of the first rocket motor tests in the Arroyo Seco.

The five men in this photo were present at the series of tests that happened in 1936 and 1937, and they came back to JPL for the celebration. From left to right are: William C. Rockefeller, William A. Bollay, Edward S. Forman, Frank J. Malina, and Apollo M.O. Smith. The historical marker found in the JPL Mall was commemorated at this event, and they posed next to a replica of the rocket motor test stand. The photo below shows a print of a 1936 test stand drawing by Frank Malina. He was the Chief Engineer of what would later become JPL, and was Acting Director from 1944 to 1946.

A print of a 1936 test stand drawing by Frank Malina.

For more information about the history of JPL, contact the JPL Archives for assistance. [Archival and other sources: various History Collection documents, photo albums, Lab-Oratory.)

You feel it in your ears and through your whole body. And everyone on the plane — two NASA G-III pilots, two flight engineers and the rest of the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) crew—feels it at exactly the same time. It has become our inside joke.

The swoosh happens every time the flight engineers drop an Aircraft eXpendable Conductivity Temperature Depth (AXCTD) probe through a hole in the bottom of the plane. The AXCTD comes in a 3-foot-long gray metal tube—with a parachute. After it hits the water, the probe measures ocean temperature and salinity from the sea surface down to about 1,000 meters. The tiny difference between cabin and outside pressure pushes the probe out and makes ears pop at the same time.

This is the second week of our three- to four-week mission that will be repeated every September/October for the next five years. We’re finally starting to iron out all the minor details in our protocol. With so many moving parts, the protocol is important, and the intricate timing helps us make sure no one forgets any details and we get the most accurate record of when and where we drop each one.

The two images above show Flight Engineers Phil Vaughn and Terry Lee ready to drop an AXCTD through a hole in the bottom of the plane.

All of us wear headsets so we can communicate with each other. Here’s an abbreviated version of how it all goes down:

1. Project Manager Steve Dinardo announces “Data recorder ready.”

2. Pilots Bill Ehrenstrom and Scott Reagan call out the cloud and ice conditions and the number of minutes to the drop site. Then they determine the altitude for the approach.

Lead scientist Josh Willis prepares to mark the probe drop on his GARMIN GPS.

4. At 50 seconds from the drop site, the plane slows down and cruises at about 5,000 feet.

5. At 20 seconds, Lee and Vaughn open the cap of the tube—you know, the one with that hole through the bottom of the plane—and everyone’s ears pop (the first time). Protocol states that they announce “Tube open!” but since our ears just popped, we often hear “Well, of course the tube’s open” or “As you already know—tube’s open.”

6. At 10 seconds, the pilots count down to 1 and say “drop.” The engineers reply “Sonde’s away” and we all feel that swoosh. There it is. Our ears pop for the second time as the AXCTD is “swooshed” down the tube and out through the hole in the bottom of the plane. (And yes, we all still look at each other with our sly smiles because it’s so much fun to say, “hole in the bottom of the plane.”)

7. It is the swoosh, more than anything said during the lengthy protocol script playing through my headset, that tells me—OMG lead scientist Josh Willis—to mark the drop on my GARMIN, a GPS we use to record the location of each drop.

8. After each drop, our aircraft banks steeply and we all silently celebrate the fact that we don’t get motion sickness. We continue circling during the six or so minutes it takes for the science probe to parachute down 5,000 feet to the sea surface and make its way through the water column, sending back data to us in real-time on the plane.

A view of Greenland’s southwest coastline out the window of NASA’s modified G-III aircraft.

We circle until Dinardo says we’re done recording data, then it’s off to the next drop site.

During our many, often challenging hours on the plane together, we share these little inside jokes and laugh—not caring if anyone in the outside world thinks it’s funny. Seems like we are bonding. I couldn’t be happier.

Laura Faye Tenenbaum is a science communicator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, teaches oceanography at Glendale Community College and writes the "Earth Right Now" blog for NASA's Global Climate Change website.

I went off for a day to visit Russell Glacier, which flows from the Greenland Ice Sheet down the Akuliarusiarsuup Kuua River, into the Kangerlussuaq Fjord and out into the Davis Strait. I knew I'd watch it melt right in front of me. And I expected to feel sad standing there so close to such an obvious and intense signal of global warming and climate change.

I stood there as the Arctic sun moved onto the horizon behind me, breathing the cool air, listening to the loud rush of meltwater passing between me and the 200-foot wall of ice in front of me. I thought about the 100,000-year span of time that this ice sheet has lasted on this planet. I looked toward the Akuliarusiarsuup Kuua River valley thinking about the future of that meltwater as it flowed out to sea. As we continue adding heat-trapping gases to our environment, our climate will keep changing and this meltwater will only increase. Someday the whole ice sheet may be gone.

I was supposed to feel sad. But I didn't. Instead I just felt grateful to be alive, right here, right now, in 2016. To be alive in that time between 100,000 years ago and the whatever-will-happen-in-our-climate-changed future.

Laura Faye Tenenbaum is a science communicator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, teaches oceanography at Glendale Community College and writes the "Earth Right Now" blog for NASA's Global Climate Change website.

JPL photographers don’t take only technical photos, although you’ll find plenty of images of parts, testing, construction, and spacecraft assembly in the JPL Archives photo collection.

On occasion, photographers explore the surrounding area, and take more artistic photos suitable for publicity, brochures, or for display in a JPL building. The newest Historical Photo of the Month shows one example – an early deep space communications antenna in California’s Mojave Desert.

This photo shows the “Transmitting Station” at what was then called the Goldstone Deep Space Instrumentation Facility (also known as the Goldstone Tracking Station or GTS). The 10-kw radio transmitter and 85-foot antenna were installed about two years after the first station ( the “Receiving Station”) became operational in December 1958. It added voice communication and radio command capabilities to the expanding Goldstone operation.

“What are we doing all the way out here?” I thought. If I looked out the left side of NASA’s modified G-III aircraft, I could see Canada out the window—Baffin Island, specifically, the largest island in Canada, part of its northeast territory. And if I looked out the right side, I could see the west coast of Greenland. We were pretty much halfway between the two, right in the middle of Baffin Bay, and I was surprised.

I was surprised that it was even possible to see Canada from Greenland. Most maps are so distorted in the high latitudes that both distance and perspective are off, and I hadn’t realized that the two islands were as close as they are to each other – just about 200 miles apart in some places. I also didn’t realize that Oceans Melting Greenland had planned to gather ocean temperature and salinity profiles so far offshore from Greenland’s coastline.

At a glacial pace

I went over to where Flight Engineer Terry Lee kept the map of all the scheduled drop positions and stared at it for a while. She’d marked with a green highlighter the places where she’d already released science probes through a tube in the bottom of the plane. (Hahahah, yes! There’s a hole in the plane through which Aircraft eXpendable Conductivity Temperature Depth (AXCTD) probes leave the aircraft to travel 5,000 feet down to the sea surface and then another 1,000 meters into the ocean, sending back data as they go.)

Lee's map of the scheduled drop sites.

And even though I’d seen this map before, the yellow dots representing scheduled probe drops were right in front of me, out in the middle of the sea, about 100 miles off the coastline. And that confused me because I presumed that this location, this far out at sea, wouldn’t have a layer of fresh water at the sea surface. I figured this far out we’d find salty 3- to 4-degree North Atlantic Ocean Water at the sea surface. So why weren’t we closer to shore where the land ice was melting?

I looked out the window as we flew on. Icebergs dotted the seascape. Each one had once been part of a vast ice sheet that’s been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Each one had moved – at a glacial pace, mind you – from the interior, down through one of the many fjords that slice through the Greenland coastline, and finally out to sea, where they would ultimately melt away. The ‘bergs were large, and it was fun to fly over them and look at their perfect whiteness against the stunning blue sea. All of us would gather on one side of the plane as we passed over a ‘berg, and then quickly jump to the other side to look for it again as we passed by it. But even though there were hundreds of icebergs floating around out there, Baffin Bay is vast — more than 250 thousand square miles. So, in the grand scheme of things, the icebergs seemed inconsequential, incapable of affecting the ocean salinity more than a small amount.

Real-time data

I was in the midst of pondering all this, not wanting to bother any of the busy team members, when Oceans Melting Greenland Project Manager Steve Dinardo called me over to the bank of computer monitors where he was working. He motioned for me to trade headsets. After I gave him mine and I put on his, I could hear the AXCTD probe sending its signal to the plane as it descended through the water column, and the noise reminded me of the sound a Wookiee from Star Wars makes.

As I was listening, I could see temperature and salinity values arriving in real-time on the monitor. “Wow, no way!” I exclaimed. “That’s insane.” All the way in the middle of Baffin Bay, 100 miles offshore, the ocean was fresher on the surface. I watched the salinity values increase as the probe sank. The temperature profile also reflected a scenario of near-zero-degree water at the surface with 3- to 4-degree ocean water below. That upper layer is Arctic Ocean Water, which is way less salty than the warmer North Atlantic Ocean Water that lies beneath it.

One of the many icebergs we flew by.

And this is the whole point of NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland mission—to find out how far that warmer North Atlantic Ocean Water has penetrated. Knowing this will help us measure the quantity and rate at which the warmer North Atlantic Ocean Water is melting the Greenland Ice Sheet.

I walked back to look at the yellow dots on the map of the scheduled probe drops one more time. We were as far away from the coast as we would be; the rest of the drops were closer to shore. I wondered how the temperature and salinity profiles in the coastal waters would compare to those from the open ocean.

And the point of the mission flooded my mind again. I looked out the window, across the stretch of Baffin Bay at the Greenland coastline, where groups of icebergs dotted the horizon. In this vast expanse, no one’s done this before, no one knows what this ocean water is like, and we are about to find out.

Laura Faye Tenenbaum is a science communicator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, teaches oceanography at Glendale Community College and writes the "Earth Right Now" blog for NASA's Global Climate Change website.

Greenland is one of the few places that’s harder to get to than outer space

I’m going to Greenland. I told my brother, and he replied, “Oh cool, I’m headed to Ireland.” That’s the typical response, as if Greenland were just some place one could book a ticket to, with commercial airports, and hotels, and restaurants and stuff. But … no, Greenland is different. It’s actually not an independent country, for example. (It’s a territory of Denmark.)

The other response I keep getting is that dumb, corny comment about it not being green. So it seems like the only thing we collectively understand about Greenland is that it’s a place to go and it has a hypocritical name.

But that is just so wrong. My husband and I finally got on the same page this morning when he opened the Google Maps satellite view of Kangerlussauq Airport, where I’m scheduled to land. “Oh,” he said. “It’s a barren dirt strip in the middle of nowhere and nothing.”

At last, an acknowledgement of the truth. The only place that’s harder to get to than Greenland is outer space. I know that sounds funny, but I’m not even kidding. (Okay, okay, Antarctica is also hard to get to, along with the Marianas Trench. Ugh.)

I first became aware of how little we know about Greenland when I was creating NASA’s Global Ice Viewer for our climate website. I found shots from Alaskan glaciers that dated all the way back to the late 1800s for the gallery. Gents with top hats and ladies in bustles with Victorian cameras stood on the ice. But Greenland? Photos taken before the 1980s are extremely rare.

Muir Glacier, Alaska, disappears. Left image: 1891. Right image: 2005. Photographed by G.D. Hazard in 1891 and by Bruce F. Molnia in 2005. Courtesy of the Glacier Photograph Collection. Boulder, Colorado, US and the National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology.

And while most people understand that increased atmospheric temperatures have been melting the ice sheet from above, global warming has also been increasing ocean temperatures. And this means the ocean waters surrounding Greenland are also melting the ice sheet from around its edges.

Which is the reason I’m headed up there with NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) campaign in the first place: to measure the temperature and salinity of those unknown waters. See, the fresh water that flows into the ocean from ice melt is about 0 degrees and less dense, so it floats right at the sea surface. The North Atlantic Ocean Water is about 3 or 4 degrees, salty and denser, so it sits right below the fresh melt water. And these two waters don’t really mix much. When the 3- or 4-degree North Atlantic Ocean Water gets in contact with Greenland’s ice sheet, it’s warm enough to melt it.

But no one knows the melt rate yet. No one.

Even though Greenland’s melting ice sheet impacts each and every one of us right now. The rate of ice melt will determine how much sea level rise we’re going to get, 5 feet or 10 feet or 20, everywhere, all over planet Earth, not just in Greenland, but at coastlines near you and me.

This is where that whole NASA “exploring the unknown” theme comes in. Next week, the OMG team (including yours truly) will be in Greenland on NASA’s G-III aircraft. We’ll spend five weeks flying around the entire coastline, measuring the salinity and temperature of the coastal waters by dropping 250 Aircraft eXpendable Conductivity Temperature Depth (AXCTD) science probes through a hole in the bottom of the plane. The reason we’re going in September is that’s the warmest time of the year in the ocean, the ice will reach its lowest extent and we’ll be able to measure as much of the coast as possible. The plan is to repeat the same mission for five years to find out what the melt rate is and how much that rate is increasing.

Am I excited? Yes, beyond. Aside from the science preparation, it took months and months of personal prep. I passed a Federal Aviation Administration medical exam, then got trained in First Aid, CPR, AED, hypoxia, disorientation, survival, and hearing conservation, and then had to buy steel-toed shoes, which are required to fly on that NASA plane. Today, I am psyched beyond belief.

Underwater disorientation training in action.

Why else would anyone work so hard to do something? Just like the rest of the team, I hope our work really makes a difference.

Laura Faye Tenenbaum is a science communicator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, teaches oceanography at Glendale Community College and writes the "Earth Right Now" blog for NASA's Global Climate Change website.

Reports and brochures about the history of aerodynamic facilities at JPL usually identify the 12-inch Supersonic Wind Tunnel as the first wind tunnel at JPL.

Reports and brochures about the history of aerodynamic facilities at JPL usually identify the 12-inch Supersonic Wind Tunnel as the first wind tunnel at JPL. It went into operation in 1949. However, in October 1947, this small induction wind tunnel was being used in studies of air-fuel combustion and turbulence. Studies were conducted by Division 2 (Thermal Jet Propulsion), which included Section 1 (Research Analysis), Section 10 (Ramjet), and Section 13 (Wind Tunnels).

This wind tunnel was located in building 106, also known as the Thermal Jet Test Cell. The cooling tower for the test cell can be seen in the background. This facility no longer exists, but it was located northeast of building 79 (former home of the 20-inch Hypersonic Wind Tunnel).

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